The roads leading into Pakistan-controlled Kashmir -- the area worst affected by Saturday's 7.6 magnitude quake -- were blocked by landslides. Power and water supplies were down, hospitals and schools destroyed.

A senior official said the quake had killed between 30,000 and 40,000 people in Pakistan, and injured another 60,000. The official toll remained at 19,000 but military spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan said it would rise.

"It is a whole generation that has been lost in the worst affected areas. The maximum number affected was schoolchildren," Sultan told AFP, saying the hardest hit area was around the Pakistani Kashmir capital of Muzaffarabad.

Offers of aid began pouring in from around the world. The United States said it had provided 50 million dollars, the World Bank offered 20 million dollars and the Asian Development Bank pledged 10 million dollars.

In many places people dug with their bare hands in an often futile attempt to reach friends and relatives trapped in the rubble, and anger started to build as help failed to arrive.

"We survived the earthquake but now we realise we will die of hunger and cold," said Mohammad Zaheer, resident of the shattered town of Balakot.

As survivors waited they faced an array of problems -- freezing overnight temperatures, rain, landslides, scarce food, little shelter, no communications networks and almost non-existent healthcare.

The United Nations said more helicopters were needed urgently to bring aid to the hardest-hit villages, most of which are nestled on hard-to-reach forested slopes in the foothills of the Himalaya, Karakoram and Hindu Kush mountain ranges.

"People don't have tools or anything. It's such a disaster," said Jan-Peter Stellema, who works for Medecins sans Frontieres in the village of Lamnian.

"Bringing aid by road is not possible. By donkey or by mule might be possible, but air operations are definitely necessary," he told the BBC.

Jan Egeland, UN coordinator of humanitarian affairs and emergency relief, said Pakistan had deployed its own substantial fleet of helicopters but the scale of the disaster required more choppers and small fixed-wing aircraft.

The United States responded by offering eight military helicopters -- five twin-rotor Chinooks and three Blackhawks based in neighbouring Afghanistan -- and two C-130 aircraft loaded with tents, blankets and other relief supplies.

Afghanistan also said it would send four military helicopters, medical teams and three tonnes of medicine.

The earthquake struck as schools were beginning classes, and hundreds if not thousands of children are feared to have died when buildings collapsed or were engulfed by landslides.

International rescue teams with sniffer dogs and specialist equipment have begun arriving in Pakistan and setting up field hospitals to cope with the tens of thousands of people injured.

Aid teams from Britain and Turkey were headed to Muzaffarabad while teams from Japan, China, Iran and the United Arab Emirates will be sent to Balakot, Batagram and other parts of Mansehra, said the Pakistani military.

The earthquake also struck the Indian-held zone of Kashmir with officials there saying 750 people were confirmed dead and another 2,500 injured. They also warned many remote villages had yet to be reached and the death toll would likely rise.

"Mobile medical teams have been dispatched to remote localities to treat the injured," Indian army spokesman Colonel Hemant Juneja told AFP.

India's military, heavily deployed along the de facto border with Pakistan, have taken the lead in the relief work on the Indian side.

Indian army teams were trekking through rugged terrain in the two worst-hit northern areas of Uri and Tangdar, but many villages remained cut off. An estimated 5,000 homes were flattened.

The quake's epicentre was close to the dividing line between the Indian- and Pakistani-controlled zones of Kashmir, and scores of soldiers on both sides died when their heavily-fortified positions collapsed around them.

Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan have fought two wars over Kashmir, but a peace process is under way and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has reached out to Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf to offer help.

But despite the warm words, the Indian military said troops Monday shot dead eight Muslim rebels infiltrating from Pakistan, while suspected rebels shot dead five Hindus as the 16-year insurgency in the state continued.

The clash came even though Kashmir's main rebel alliance, the United Jihad Council (UJC), announced it would suspend militant operations in quake-hit areas of the state and urged its leaders to help the relief effort.

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

Related Links
TerraDaily
Search TerraDaily
Subscribe To TerraDaily Express

Thanks for being here; We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain. With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords. Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year. If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.
SpaceDaily Contributor $5 Billed Once credit card or paypal		SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter $5 Billed Monthly paypal only